Generally, there are two primary types of furniture—(1) custom or non-custom solid wood furniture or other solid wood products (collectively referred to herein as “solid wood products”) and (2) engineered or manufactured furniture, sheet-goods products/furniture or ready-to-assemble furniture (collectively referred to herein as “sheet-goods products”). Sheet-goods products are often made of layered low quality wood products, plywood, particle board or the like. Manufactured wood pieces, because of their non-homogenized composition, do not enable complex joinery between pieces. Rather, manufactured wood generally utilizes simple joints such as dowel joints that use abutting pieces that are secured using dowels. Often sheet-goods products may be machine assembled because of the relatively simple joints used between furniture pieces. In other use cases, sheet-goods products may be sold as part of a kit with instructions for the end user to assemble the furniture. The types of joints used in this furniture must be simple and easily assembled and include joints such as abutting joints that use dowels.
On the other hand, solid wood products are typically more expensive to design, cut and build and have greater durability, higher quality and better aesthetic appeal than sheet-goods products. People ordering custom furniture order solid wood products utilizing parametric joinery. Such high end furniture is custom designed including various complex or parametric joinery and cut to strict dimensions for optimal fit among solid wood pieces. The faces or sides of the solid wood pieces may be cut with complex couplings that ensure exceptional fit among the pieces. This highly accurate fit among pieces of solid wood increases the end quality of the piece of furniture. “Parametric joinery” as used herein refers to the use of complex joints (e.g., miter joint, dovetail joint, dado joint, mortise and tenon joint, etc.) between two or more solid wood components in the construction of solid wood products. A “parametric joint” as used herein refers to any complex joint (used in production of solid wood products (e.g., miter joint, dovetail joint, dado joint, mortise and tenon joint, etc.).
In many cases, sheet-goods products have been sold fully assembled by the manufacturer or provided in a kit for end user assembly. In contrast, solid wood furniture utilizes conventional wood furniture fabrication techniques and typically requires a large amount of time, skill, and training to produce a quality product. In this regard, custom solid wood products typically require the skill and training of a master of the craft such as a master carpenter, as well as a large assortment of woodworking tools, workspace and other resources.
With the advent of computer numerical control (CNC) tools (e.g., routers, lasers, water jet cutters, or the like), some furniture manufacturers have gained the ability to perform a number of woodworking operations by writing and implementing (what is often) complex machine code (such as “G-code”), but implementation of many woodworking operations is still time-consuming and tedious. In many cases, adjusting a single parameter of a component, such as the height of a side of a cabinet, requires re-writing of machine code and/or re-calculation of numerous product/component dimensions, angles of cuts and (x, y, z) start and end positions of machines and the like (collectively, “product parameters”).
A CNC wood router, also known as a CNC wood milling machine, CNC wood router, CNC wood lathe, CNC router machine, CNC wood cutter or CNC woodworking machine, is a computer numerical control tool that uses computer software to drive a mechanical system. For example, traditionally, a simple chair's underlying components may be designed using computer aided design (CAD) software, which is a tedious process that requires each individual piece of the chair be manually drawn with the software. Use of complex joinery is impossible or nearly impossible using such a labor-intensive process. A designer may become satisfied with the three-dimensional models of the components, the software may be configured to generate simple G-code based on the drawings, and the wood CNC machine executes the design and manufactures the product. However, designing intricate furniture parts requires an extensive knowledge in CAD programming and is heavily time-intensive even for the most skilled designers.